The Machine (21 page)

Vic wakes her. She thinks, first thing, that she seems to do nothing but sleep: that this has taken so much out of her that she can hardly stand it. She’s on the sofa, curled up, her whole length pressed tightly between the sofa arms, and her body aches and moans as it unfolds itself.

You’re asleep, he says.

I know. I slept here.

You need to clean your head still, he says. She reaches up and touches the scab, hard and thick, and her hair is caught in it, knotted. She can feel the skin underneath the scab healing, slightly tender. She needs a shower, and she needs to clean the wound, and the hair. We’ll have a scar in the same place, he says. He touches it. He knows exactly how to touch her still. I’m worried about you, he says.

Don’t, Beth says.

I am. I do. He sits on the end of the sofa newly vacated by her feet. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know. There’s something about him that doesn’t look sad, Beth thinks. As if he’d eaten something that he shouldn’t have, or fucked another woman: a crime that had a payoff. A result. Something done to appease a hunger. I think maybe the Machine could wipe that I did it, he says. Is that a good idea?

No, Beth says. Don’t even think that.

But it won’t do any good, knowing it. And you could wipe it as well. Get it taken away, like it never happened.

It did happen.

Yes. But.

We have to leave, Beth says. Laura knows.

Your friend.

She’s not my friend.

She knows?

Yes. She knows that you’re back. She’s … Beth’s about to say something about the Machine, about what Laura thinks of it, but she catches herself. She doesn’t want to make Vic angry. Or the Machine. But she thinks about that boy, and how Vic saw him as a threat. She doesn’t want the same for Laura. She’s just nosy, Beth says, and she’s insistent, and she won’t leave anything alone.

He smiles. You used to hate that in people.

I still do, Beth tells him. She smiles at him, but it takes effort. He dresses himself, and she watches his body putting itself into his clothes, and she wonders if she could remove his memories of the murder. She couldn’t do it again, no, no chance of her putting him back into the hands of the Machine, because she couldn’t bear to see his face contorted that way again; and that noise from his mouth; and she couldn’t stand the wrenching away, piece by piece – like a finished jigsaw being picked apart, fingernails pushed under the pieces to remove them, watching the picture fall apart.

So we leave, he says to her from the bedroom. Right?

As soon as we can.

How soon is that?

Today. Tomorrow at the latest. We pack what we need, that’s it. Landlord can throw the rest.

What about that, in the other room? He looks at the bedroom wall, as if he can see through it to the Machine. She knows he can hear it, even though she’s never asked him. She just knows.

We disassemble it.

Okay. Vic nods, but Beth’s sure there’s something else there: a twitch. A tic.

She fetches bags from the bedroom, from underneath the bed: two large holdalls, one that used to be his, in their previous life, and one that used to be hers, and she puts them onto the bed and peels them open. She starts with her casual clothes: the stuff she can wear day to day, regardless of where they end up. She had planned for the UK, but there’s a lot to be said for abroad. Heading to France, maybe, where their money might go a bit further; or Spain, if they can cope with the heat there. She thinks about how much she’s been sleeping, and laughs at how easily she could adjust to the siesta lifestyle. Maybe Spain, she tells herself. Get the ferry to France, buy a car, drive down. Get the ferry to Spain itself, if Vic’s up to it. He used to get seasick. She wonders if that – his seasickness – will have made the transition, because it wasn’t mentioned in any of the recordings. Is seasickness part of a person? Or something embedded in a memory?

Vic stands by the front door.

I want to go for a run, he says.

It’s best if you don’t.

Why?

Because of the police.

They won’t ask me who I am.

Just stay here, please, Beth says. She realizes that she sounds desperate: but she doesn’t know why he’s being so casual about this. He sits on the sofa and stares at the wall, as if that is all that he is: he runs, he argues, he occasionally comforts her and apologizes. Why don’t you watch TV? Beth says.

No, he tells her. There’s no petulance in the voice, just a declaration that he doesn’t want to.

Then help me pack this stuff.

None of it is even mine, he says, which is untrue, because all the male clothes are his, every single item, but how would he remember that? So Beth does it for him: folding his t-shirts and shorts and trousers, which all seem to be white or shades of white, and which take up twice the space of Beth’s own clothes. She puts in toiletries, but they’re all hers, and then she decides against it: he needs ownership, she thinks. So she puts them back in the bathroom and decides that he should buy his own when they get to wherever they’re going, buy real male-scented toiletries that he wants to use. But then she wonders if he’ll even know what he wants, or if he’ll stare at these things on their shelves in the shop, and she’ll ask him what scents he wants, what sort of products, and he’ll be blank and clueless because it doesn’t matter to him. Because he never cried to a doctor, or to Beth, about the shampoo he preferred, and so it was never logged, and so it was never put back in. She wonders if maybe the gaps that the Machine filled in, if maybe one of them will have taken care of that. She wonders what Vic can smell at this moment. She sits on the bed and wonders these things as time rockets past, and all she can think, as she reaches every empty conclusion, is that she’s made a terrible mistake.

She takes one of the painkillers she bought, that she didn’t crush up for Vic, and another straight afterwards, deciding that one isn’t enough. Two isn’t even enough. Vic is asleep again – both of them are constantly exhausted, but after what they’ve been through maybe that’s okay – so she opens her laptop, standing with it at the kitchen worktop. On her forum, she looks at the topic that she created, and the replies. There are a few standard responses, from users who assume that she’s having problems – We’re so sorry, they say, or It’ll get there, give it time – and then there’s one from somebody whose username she doesn’t recognize. This is their first and only post.

They write that they’ve been a long-time lurker on the boards, but that they never had the urge to write anything before. They write that their partner – their choice of word, keeping everything ambiguous – had treatments in the earliest days, to get over a terrible event in their life. When they came out the other side, their faculties were hanging by a thread, and one day that thread snapped. It was, the post says, the worst day of their lives. (Beth thinks about what the writer wouldn’t have given to have had the Vic she was presented with: rough and unfinished and crudely drawn, but stable; and how she had destroyed him because she wanted so much more than that.) The writer’s partner spent four years, nearly, in a home, and then they were pulled out – not by the writer, but by the company who made the Machines. They needed people to trial their cure on: the writer didn’t see how it could make things worse.

There were five trial cases, the post says, and nothing has been said of them in public. They signed non-disclosure agreements and waivers of responsibility, but it was a way to get their loved ones back, in some shape or form. A year, they spent being worked on. (Beth thinks about her time rebuilding Vic, such a condensed period.) And then they were handed back to their loved ones: complete, or so they were told. Beth reads all this with her hands gripping the laptop sides, and biting into the inside of her cheek, worrying the flesh there with her back teeth. But they weren’t complete: the author of the piece doesn’t go into specifics, but says that there was something wrong.

They had it all back, says the writer, but there was something missing, and it made me think that there was something wrong with the way the Machine glossed over the gaps. But what if that wasn’t the problem? What if the problems – my partner had a temper, and said things that they would never have said before, looked at me like I was nothing, dead, filth – what if the problems are something that’s part of us already?

What if they’re part of humans, and we paste over them; and the gaps that are left after this, what if they’re just holes that let the darkness out?

Beth stands back from the work surface. She doesn’t write her own reply to the post; not because she doesn’t have anything to say, or doesn’t think that she can contribute, but because she can’t stop shaking, and she clings to the fridge, which is behind her, and she can feel that shaking with her, and she thinks, How did the Machine do this to us?

They’re not finished packing, so Beth tells Vic that she’ll get them a takeaway. She asks him what he would like from the Indian, and he says that he doesn’t mind.

You must mind, she says.

I really don’t.

Spicy, creamy, what?

For fuck’s sake, Beth. Just whatever. Whatever I like. He makes fists and bangs them on the table and doesn’t look directly at her. You can go out and I can’t? he suddenly asks.

No. It’s not like that. But nobody knows you’re here, Vic.

What are you so scared of? he asks. Are you ashamed of me?

You killed that boy, she says, her smallest voice. He still doesn’t look at her. He doesn’t apologize, or explain, or even react. He’s just still.

She slams the door as she leaves, and she walks down the balcony and into the stairwell, and she forgets about the blind corner. She’s never met anybody here, even though it has always felt like a threat. And then now she turns it, and there’s somebody there, waiting, or just getting ready to climb the stairs. Laura. She staggers backwards, and then she smiles: out of pity, or pleasure, somewhere between the two.

I was coming to see you, she says. She reaches out and takes Beth’s arm before she’s even had a chance to react. I wanted to tell you that it will be okay: that you can tell the police, and I will support you. You had nothing to do with it: it was all that monster of a husband of yours.

Get off me, Beth says. She starts to walk: she has to carry on. Twelve hours and they’ll be on a boat to somewhere else entirely. Laura runs behind her, stepping double-fast to keep up.

Beth, she says, you have to listen to me.

I don’t.

This is creation, Beth. You don’t mess with creation, as it is the purview of our one God, Beth. Don’t you see that?

Beth stops and turns. I didn’t mess with creation, she says. I put back what had been taken out. Nothing more. This isn’t some bullshit that involves your fucking church, Laura: this is my husband, my life.

And what about that boy’s life?

Beth turns and walks on again, because she doesn’t want to react. Laura shouts after her, not bothering to match pace now, but still walking.

Did he deserve to die? Laura asks. Did he fall at the hands of the monster you call your husband, Beth? She shouts loudly enough that somebody listening could hear, which scares Beth slightly, so she walks even faster. Did you really think that he could get away with this?

Beth steps inside the restaurant and stands in the entryway, in front of the curtain that leads to the tabled area. There’s nobody at the bar. She breathes. She can’t hear Laura any more, not from in here. She shuts her eyes and counts down from fifty. She’s wondering if it will be enough, when the curtain rustles and the waiter appears.

Jesus, he says, you all right?

I’m fine.

Yeah, okay. You want a drink? She doesn’t answer, but hears the pouring of something anyway, then the clink of a glass on the side. Go on, he says, and she does, and it’s bitter and sharp, but exactly right: enough to wake her up a little, to shock her into remembering where she is and what she’s doing. You want food, or you just hiding from somebody?

It takes her a second to realize he’s referring to the trouble she had with the the boy, not Laura. She glances through the glass frontage, and can’t see her anywhere.

No, I want food, she says. She orders a korma and a makhani and some rice and a naan.

Two of you eating, eh? He says it with an implied nudge. He’s smiling.

Yes, she says. My husband.

Good for you, love, good for you. He disappears and she hears talking from the other end of the restaurant, then the slam of the kitchen door. Done, he says when he returns, five minutes at most. He stops and looks around. Quiet night, he says, as if it’s ever not. You want a seat?

No, she says. Can I wait here?

Course you can. You want me to leave you alone?

No, she says. It’s fine. They stand in silence, and then she glimpses herself in the mirror behind the bottles of alcohol that line the rear of the bar, and she sees what a state she looks. Like one of those women that they used to avoid on the train: her hair is pulled and lank and greasy, and around the scab it’s deep, thick red, almost black-red; her clothes are misshapen and malformed around her body, which has been losing weight. Has she been forgetting to eat? Her face is pale and wrongly hued. She looks older than she is, and that scab … She touches it with her fingertips. Inside her head she can hear the noise that her fingernails make, the tap-tap-tap on the hard shell.

What did you do? the waiter asks. If you don’t mind me asking. Oh my God that was rude of me. Sorry.

No, she says. It’s fine. I fell over. Scraped it.

Ouch. It looks well nasty. You been to the doctor? He knows that she hasn’t. He wants to drop the hint that she should. They both know it.

No, she says. I need to clean it more.

Scab like that, might need a stitch.

I think it’s healing, she says.

Okay, he replies. Okay.

She puts her head down and looks at the floor. At the carpet, which is red and gold, and meant to invoke something, along with the music: the sensation of being somewhere other than a small restaurant on the Isle of Wight, a small place of faded glory; as if, instead, you’re in the Taj Mahal, one of the great wonders of the world, a place of regal majesty. The carpet, the cold gold trim around the bar, the cutlery, the nearly erotic imagery on the walls, the piped-in sitar music. It’s all effect, nodding to a colonial memory. It never works, nobody is ever impressed by the facade, but it’s ingrained now. Part of the culture. She doesn’t say anything more, and neither does the waiter, not until the food is ready – the ringing of a bell, calling him to collect it – and then, as he hands it over, he puts one hand on hers.

If you need any help, come back in here, he says. You know what I’m saying. Okay?

Okay, she says. She doesn’t look at him, even when he holds the door open for her and she slides past him and into the warm night.

She’s past the shops – which are all quiet, the group of kids mourning and silent after the death of their friend, or put under some sort of curfew by their parents, maybe – and has reached the point where it happened, when she sees Laura, standing by the sign that implores people to rethink their decision and to call a number that might help them, because we’ve all been through feelings like that, and we’re all in this together. You and me, the sign says.

This is where he fell from, that’s what the paper says. Laura looks at the lip of the cliff edge, as if the ground itself is guilty.

Don’t, Beth says. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

Is this where you did it?

You don’t know what you’re talking about. Beth tries to walk on, but Laura reaches out and grabs her arm, and she does it with enough force that Beth spins slightly, and she feels her ankle going, and she’s suddenly on the ground, and her hands are on the rocks and stones that surround the point. The bag with the curry splits and the cartons seem to bounce up and collide, and they spill, the thick sauces going everywhere: on the ground, on Beth’s knees, slapping onto her top. Laura stands back and looks at her, and she opens her mouth as if she’s about to say something but nothing comes out; just a gasp that might pass as an apology, over and over again, inhaling breath. She steps backwards, and Beth thinks, You could fall, and she hates herself for thinking it as soon as she has – those are the words that form in her mind, almost spoken, an invocation – and then Beth shuts her eyes. She holds them shut.

She hears him before she sees him: all heavy feet and thudding breaths, and he runs past her and to Laura. He’s got something in his hands – a rock? Something heavy, certainly – and it collides with Laura’s head.

Vic! Beth screams, and Laura crumples. Beth sees her fall to the grass: hitting the ground as if she came down from a much greater height, loose and free, like she’s floating. She lies on the floor and blood comes from her head, and Vic stands over her and gasps.

I had to help you, he says.

Beth doesn’t reply. She pushes herself to her feet – he holds out his hand to her but she flinches away from him – and then looks at what he’s done. There’s nobody else around, and everything is quiet. There’s a faint smell – pot, it smells like – on the air, coming from the estate. Laura isn’t moving: the wet blood on her head curiously mirroring the dried blood on Beth’s. It’s thicker, Beth thinks, and she would be more worried if Laura wasn’t still breathing, and if the blood didn’t seem to have stopped flowing from the wound.

Beth? he asks.

Don’t, she says. Go back to the flat.

I can help, he says, but she thinks she knows what he’ll suggest, because he’s done it before, and how could she forget that? How could she let that slide?

Just go. Quietly. Please, Vic.

He does. He backs up the road, watching her as she stands over her fallen friend, and he only turns when he reaches the top, when he needs to look where he’s going, and then he’s gone. Beth picks up the takeaway and bundles it into the bag, and she puts the bag into the bin across the way. It’s all ruined now, spilled out and wasted. And Laura: she moves slightly, her hand and her arm. Beth bends down.

I’m so sorry, she says. He didn’t mean it. You might be right, you should know that. You might be right that there’s something wrong with him, but I don’t know what to do about it. Laura flinches as Beth says it. I’m sorry. We don’t have long together, and we have to get out of here. You were my friend. Laura’s eyes open and she looks at Beth. She focuses on her, and one of her eyes has got a bleed in it, running in from the left, running down the veins and flooding the rest of the white. Laura opens her mouth to speak.

Monster, she says, and her eyes roll back.

Please don’t, Beth says. She thinks about leaving Laura there, but she knows; and now that is what will be solidified in her mind: that she was attacked because she knew too much. Beth wonders how this works now, because she doesn’t know. She knows TV shows and movies, but not real life. If the police will even take Laura seriously.

Then she hears it, and she feels it: this far down the hill, this close to the sea. She feels it through the ground: a tremor, and she looks around, thinking that it could be more of the land falling into the sea, just like the times with the floods; and then she hears it. A groan that comes from the estate, but she can pinpoint it exactly, because she knows what it is.

It says, You can make this better. You can take this away from her. And Beth doesn’t even stop to think about it. She bends down and puts her arm underneath Laura’s, and she pulls her to her feet. The walk back to the flat isn’t too far, and she feels stronger than she did before. The adrenaline that a father feels when his child is trapped under a car, and he tells the newspapers, afterwards, that somehow he found the strength to lift it, to bend his knees and do something superhuman. Laura’s limp body needs constant support, which she gets: and Beth practises what she learned with Vic when she brought him to the island. She walks Laura, one step at a time, to the estate and then up the stairwell, propping her body and getting her up the stairs that way – and she suddenly can’t remember how she did this with Vic the first time, this leg of the trip. It’s like he turned up on her doorstep and that was a new start for them.

She opens the front door, still clutching Laura’s body. She lowers her to the floor by the door, so that she’s sitting with her head resting against the wall. The lights inside are off, apart from that ghostly glaze coming from the Machine’s room; and Vic is sitting on the sofa. She can hear his breathing; and the breathing of the Machine, somehow synchronous.

Why is she here? he asks. He sounds only slightly scared. Everything else in him is passive.

We can take this away from her, Beth says. Vic turns his head to look at her, but it’s too dark to see him properly. She knows that it’s wrong: his shape; the way that he is; the things that he remembers. It’s all wrong. The things that she knows, says Beth. She doesn’t have to know them.

Somebody will be looking for her.

Nobody knows she’s here.

This seems so cruel, he says, and he sobs. This big man, so big that he seems almost supernatural, and what he’s actually made of, Beth doesn’t know, because her Vic would never have killed that boy and he would never have attacked Laura like that, and she has to tell herself that, because she knows that this is wrong: but it’s something that she worked for.

We have to put it right, she says.

She was going to hurt you.

She wasn’t. She grabbed me. It didn’t mean anything, she says. She wants to say, This isn’t an argument about how inhuman you are. It’s about how we deal with Laura.

People are capable of anything, he says. It’s inside all of us.

Where did you hear that? she asks. He doesn’t answer. She walks past him and to the Machine’s room, where the door is open and the light from the screen is casting itself across everything, and that’s impossible, unless he’s been in here. But she doesn’t question that, not now. She tells Vic to bring Laura through.

No, he says.

Don’t do this, Beth says. He doesn’t react: he sits on the sofa, and is how he is. So she goes back to Laura’s body and drags it through the flat and to the Machine’s room. She puts her on the bed – and Laura looks wrong there, because it should be Vic, Beth’s used to it being Vic – and she takes the Crown from the dock. She uses lubricant, because it’s kinder; and it slides onto the temples.

She waits for Laura to wake.